Computer-aided design and modeling (CAD/CAM) have become an integral part of the process for designing and manufacturing any number of components. By designing, modeling, and revising the components in a data processing system, the product can be visualized and optimized as it is being developed to ensure a correct design before any actual manufacturing takes place.
The ability to quickly find potential design problems which will impact manufacturing with high costs or other problems is a great advantage during this process. To validate designed product models, it is necessary to define the character of each face and edge to determine the interrelation of each modeled part. There is currently no accurate, automated method for finding manufacturing related features such as parting lines, undercuts, crossover faces, cavity and core regions.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for a system, process and computer program product for enabling an efficient and automated identification and characterization of the above manufacturing related features in product models.